Daughters
by HedgieX
Summary: How Kacey feels when she is suddenly displaced from Nicki's affections by Eve, and how she comes to realise that maybe the word 'daughter' doesn't have to mean everything changes. It's been so long since I've written anything that I've possible forgotten how to write. Angst and fluff in reasonably equal measures. One-shot.


_I almost can't quite believe how long it's been since I've written something. Me and Sarah livetexted last night's Waterloo properly for the first time in weeks – which is always hysterical – and it inspired this. I don't think I've written anything for Kacey before; in any case I'm a bit out of practice so this isn't wonderful (and it's also far too soppy) but I hope everyone enjoys it._

**Daughters**

Kacey knew better than anyone what it was like to have someone judge you for something you weren't in control of. When she first saw Eve in the corridor, she tried not to judge her, she really did, but trying wasn't always quite good enough. That was something else she knew.

She was tired and frustrated with Miss Boston for letting her down, and something about this girl – probably, she was ashamed to say, the nose ring – irritated her. A scruff in a curious orange shirt, leaning back against the wall like she owned the place, waiting for Miss Boston.

"Miss Boston doesn't have a daughter."

"Actually, she does." Eve had a smooth, clear voice, like her vocal chords had been sandpapered. Kacey wondered if she was in a choir. She had that sort of face, if you looked past the piercings; heart-shaped, a little bit angelic. Was her tone smug, or did Kacey's anger just skew her perspective?

Once you have set your heart on disliking someone, it's difficult to unset it. It takes time, like when you accidentally set the clock an hour ahead and have to go all the way round the clock face to get back to the intended time. All day Kacey's disappointment sat heavily on her chest. So many things had been promised and then taken away; nothing had ever been easy for her, ever. She'd thought Miss Boston understood that.

It made her miss Tom furiously. It was stupid to have feelings for a teacher, they just marked your work for a couple of years and then you moved on and they stayed where they were, marking new students' work. Maybe they never thought about you again. Maybe they read about you in the "announcements" column of the paper ten years later when you had a child, or heard you interviewed on the radio about the X Factor, and briefly they thought "I taught her". That was the extent of the relationship.

Yet Tom had not been like that. Kacey refused to believe they would have become strangers to one another like that; Tom would always have been there for her. She'd thought Miss Boston understood that, too, that in some way she could help fill the void Tom had left behind. But the fact remained: if Tom had been here Kacey would have been going to America, and yet with Miss Boston here she wasn't. Her mother had ripped the form into shreds in front of her.

_Mother._ She hadn't thought of Miss Boston as a mother figure really, not in the way that Tom had been like a dad. She barely looked old enough to have a child, let alone one who stood so tall and proud, like Eve. All day Eve's face came to mind, the shape of her face and the colour of her hair. They were so similar to Miss Boston's that it was inevitable, of course she was her daughter. Miss Boston had shared her life with Eve for sixteen, even seventeen years, she was her own flesh and blood, and she'd never even mentioned her. Wasn't Kacey important enough to know such a vital thing?

The way Miss Boston stood between Kacey and Eve, like she was protecting her daughter from harm, made Kacey feel sick. Eve was so beautiful when you got close to her, her skin flawless like ivory; Kacey wanted to run her fingers down Eve's cheeks, see blood rise up in bubbles to the surface. She wanted to hurt this thing that had come between her and the woman she'd thought could make all of her dreams come true.

She flew at her, tugged at her hair, felt how silky it was. Was this what it was to run your fingers through Miss Boston's hair, to see her shoulders shift slightly as she breathed in and out? Hurting Eve was like hurting Miss Boston.

And so when Eve scrambled down the steps of Waterloo Road, beautiful big eyes leaking black tears, running from her mother, Kacey wanted to be glad, but she couldn't quite manage it. When Eve ran away, Kacey followed.

She'd thrown her teddy in the water. It was damp and grimy and forlorn when Kacey dug it out, it was something that ought to have been discarded, but it was something Miss Boston had given her beautiful daughter.

Whilst Nicki stood in the toilets with Christine and poured out her heart to her boss, Kacey sat on a wall by the sea beside Eve and listened to her story. Nearly two decades spent believing her mother was dead, only to learn she'd thrown her daughter away when she was a few hours old. All these years precious wasted. All these years believing her mother was an angel, dreaming of how it felt to be held in her arms. Eve clutched the teddy to her chest like she thought Miss Boston might feel the ferocity of this love, if only she held it tightly enough.

"What's her name?" Kacey asked. Eve looked sideways, beautiful panda eyes filled with questioning. Kacey thought about saying nothing – it was such a feeble question – but another tear fell down Eve's cheek, following her hairline, and so she said "The teddy, what's her name?"

"It's a he, Liam. Dad said they would have called me Liam if I'd been a boy. He said Mum liked that name. So I– stupid name for a teddy, isn't it?"

"I have a brother called Barry Barry. I'm not even joking."

Eve had one of those laughs which are guaranteed to cause everyone else around the person to laugh too. Kacey looked at the photos she'd laid on the wall beside her after fishing them out, smudged at the edges from the water. One of Miss Boston looking barely older than Kacey herself.

"I'm sorry if I– you know, if I kind of interrupted this morning. With Miss Boston and your wrestling thing in America."

Kacey surprised herself with the fact that she didn't feel the urge to correct 'wrestling'. "Sorry for pulling your hair."

Eve brought a hand up to her fringe almost subconsciously, ran her fingers through it. Kacey had seen Miss Boston do that hundreds of times. It was as comforting as Tom's smile once had been, something that showed Kacey that, whatever else in the world was changing, there would always be someone there who cared about her.

"This morning I thought I'd found my mum. Now I just feel like I've lost her all over again."

"You haven't lost her."

"She didn't want me. She tried to– she wanted to get rid of me. I wouldn't ever have– I would have been _nothing_."

Kacey opened her mouth to reply, but Eve hushed her with a small flick of her white fingers. Both girls looked out at the sea and the sky and the line where they merged into one thing.

"And all these years when she could have changed it, she could've found me. I've had to go through so many things on my own," her voice trembled, like someone was loading anger on top of it and it couldn't bear the weight, "I've had Dad and my nan. Everyone else's mums went to their Christmas shows and clapped when they did their 'neighs' at the right time, and let them watch old films when they were ill, and showed them how to shave their legs. And I was always okay with that, I always thought my mum would have been there if she could have been, I knew she was watching over me. But she didn't give a damn."

"Their neighs?"

"Don't donkeys neigh?" Eve smiled, but her face crumbled like someone had smashed a fist through a porcelain doll and broken her.

Kacey said nothing, she didn't know what there was to be said. She let Eve lean her head on her shoulder and she touched her hair like she thought Miss Boston would have done, if she'd been there when Eve was little.

"It's funny, how I'm her– her real daughter, but you're more– you're more– of a daughter to her than I can ever be."

Kacey remembered Tom telling her about his daughters. He said they weren't real daughters, but their mum had died and he'd loved them just like he'd known them for all of their lives. She couldn't remember their names now. Tom's eyes had been warm when he'd spoken of them, like Miss Boston's eyes were warm when Kacey did well with her boxing. The kind of pride you couldn't fake, the kind of pride that had been in Miss Boston's eyes when she'd stood in the corridor between Kacey and Eve this morning and looked at her daughter and seen this beautiful thing that had come looking for her.

"She loves you," Kacey said.

"She doesn't know me."

"Nah, she doesn't know stuff about you. She didn't see you 'neigh', or whatever. But she's your mum." The words 'mum' and 'love' were intrinsically linked to Kacey, none of the details mattered in the end. "She's probably thought about you every single day of her life."

"You think so?"

"You've thought about _her_, haven't you?"

And so it came about that Kacey and Eve walked back up to Waterloo Road together, Kacey carrying the photos and Eve the teddy. They stopped by the scarlet gates for a moment by mutual consent, watching Nicki sitting motionless on the steps with her chin cupped in her long white fingers, and then they crossed the tarmac together.

"Eve." Miss Boston's voice sounded hoarse to Kacey. It was like she hadn't expected ever to see her daughter again, maybe she thought today had only been a dream. Eve stumbled up a couple of steps and Miss Boston down a couple, and Miss Boston held Eve like Eve held the teddy, ferocious and desperate, clinging to her daughter like she was frightened she would lose her if she let go.

It was Eve who moved first. She turned slightly and smiled at Kacey; Kacey smiled back and tried to slip up the steps and into the school.

"No, Kace. Come here."

Miss Boston pulled her in on one side and held Eve on the other, and pressed her forehead against each of their shoulders. She mumbled something that sounded like an apology, over and over, until Eve whispered, "It's okay, Mum." Nobody moved; Kacey thought that she would not have noticed if the whole world had vanished from around her.

"Your– your mum's with Tariq, in the classroom next to mine," Miss Boston whispered to Kacey eventually, "They're just finalising things. Seems like there's a lot to sort out, clothes and equipment and the like."

Eve looked up. "For America?"

"Mmhm. I think maybe she's realised how important this is." Miss Boston held Kacey close for a moment, during which time Kacey inhaled her, the perfume and the warmth and the softness, and then her teacher gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. "Better not keep her waiting, or she might change her mind."

"Love you, Miss."

Nicki's laugh was as soft as Eve's. Kacey cleared the rest of the concrete stairs in a single leap and stood for a moment in the doorway before she went inside, just watching. As much as Kacey had meant what she said seconds before about loving Miss Boston, it was a kind of fake love. Not that it was superficial, because she really did love her, but it was happiness, fondness, really. What she felt was nothing compared to what Eve, the true daughter, expressed now.

"I love you, Mum."

And before Kacey turned away completely she noted one more thing. There was a man standing next to an orange car a few metres away, his head tilted slightly as he watched his daughter hug her mother, and Kacey realised with the childish horror that must come to all students at some point during their education when they realise a similar thing. _Miss Boston slept with that man._


End file.
